


Above the Stars of God

by habenaria_radiata



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Cindered Shadows Spoilers, Dark Humor, Deal with a Devil, Demon Byleth, F/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Weird Fear Boners, minor characters not tagged
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:42:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23095036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/habenaria_radiata/pseuds/habenaria_radiata
Summary: The thing about trying to pull off a ritual that hasn't been performed in a near-millennia is that you better be damn sure you know what you're doing.This particular Rite succeeds without a hitch -- just not in the spirit in which it'd been intended.[major spoilers for all of Cindered Shadows, rating may go up]
Relationships: Yuris Leclair | Yuri Leclerc/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 87
Kudos: 248





	1. Haresis Dea

**Author's Note:**

> To everyone who subscribed to me thinking that 'Painted Lady' was indicative of the rest of my body of work, I deeply apologize for tricking you.
> 
> Thank you to [Cinereous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinereous/profile) for beta-ing for me, and also for making me feel like my audience is two people instead of one.

* * *

_Putrefaction_   
_A scent that cursed be_   
_Under cold, dark dust_

_From the darkness_   
_Rise a succubus_   
_From the earthen rust_

\---

The world did not afford its inhabitants many constants. It was an ever-changing place that punished complacency, offering up only one of two ways to deal with it: either you could roll with the punches, or over in defeat. Playing cards, though -- those stayed the same. Sure, he’d come across a few decks that were racier than others, but the fundamentals never differed from their more respectable counterparts. The King of Diamonds could be relied upon to wield an axe. The queens could be relied upon to clutch some variety of flower in their perennially delicate hands. The King of Hearts could be relied upon to stab himself in the head, for some fucked up reason. And at least one ace could always be relied upon to be tucked neatly up inside the sleeve of the Savage Mockingbird.

That was the expectation others had of him, at any rate, and he was in no position to blame them when he’d dedicated much of his life to fostering that exact impression. Maybe if people were as static as playing cards, it might even be true.

Rhea was not coming.

Yuri tried to lift his head, but it felt akin to trying to raise a boulder with a tree branch. The best he could do was open his eyes, and his vision exploded with black spots. He’d always sort of imagined bleeding out to be one of the marginally less horrifying deaths. No one had ever told him losing so much of it made you so dizzy you’d want to puke. Strange to realize he’d never experienced that before when he’d spent so much time dancing between enemy blades. He sucked in through his nose as hard as he could and willed his hand to move. His fingertips were so numb he couldn’t tell if it did or not.

She wasn’t coming. No one was coming for them. Aelfric was standing at the altar of a dead woman, and the Chalice was so gorged with their blood it was spilling down the sides in viscous rivulets. He let his eyes fall away from their ‘shepherd’ to look directly across the way instead. Constance wasn’t moving. The last he’d been able to see Balthus, he was slumped against a wall, his face the color of sour milk and his broad chest heaving with slow, labored breaths. He couldn’t even see Hapi. Aelfric was going to win, and some beautiful corpse would rise for the four of them to take her place under the cold, hard ground, and no one was coming to save them. The Wolves would come to their ends knowing that he’d broken his arrogant promise to all of them, one final slap in the face before eternity swallowed them whole. So much for the Knights of Seiros. As if he needed anyone’s help to make a liar of himself.

Aelfric was saying something, he thought, brought back to the dimmest of awareness. His voice was muffled, barely able to reach him when his ears felt stuffed with raw cotton. Fucking Aelfric. A little deliriously, Yuri rolled his head in the opposite direction, his temple resting against his bent forearm and his eyes sliding over to their alleged betrayer. Self-centered prick though he was, truth be told, he had no idea why the rest of them were so surprised by it. Or why anyone thought of shepherds as some benevolent force for good, for that matter. In that sense, Aelfric was perfectly upfront and exactly right. To all others, they were the Ashen Wolves; to Aelfric, they were his flock up to the bitter end, protected from the jaws of predators only until it was time for the shepherd to devour them himself.

His eyelids sank. His stomach roiled once more, but he was too drained to go through the effort of retching up the remnants of his last meal. He couldn’t help but wish he’d eaten something a little more interesting, knowing how all this was going to end.

They sank further until they closed entirely, his eyelashes coming to rest against his cheek. A soft breeze coursed through his hair and fluttered his bangs like cool fingers.

His eyes snapped open. A breeze? Underground in a closed mausoleum? The candles surrounding him flickered, and his hair rustled with a little more enthusiasm as it kicked up again. It was. That was air on his skin. Dazed, he lifted his chin from the ground to see Aelfric’s robes pick up as the man looked around in confusion like a hunted rabbit.

A violent gust blasted across his face, sweeping through the room so loudly it howled between the pillars. Each and every one of the candles snuffed out at once, plunging them into total darkness. For several seconds, the sound of scraping metal and panicked soldiers was sharp enough to pierce through the cotton in his ears. He struggled to lift his head higher, both his forearms digging into the sand-colored stone and his breath coming out in ragged bursts. His eyes still stung with the force of frigid air. Then it stopped, his hair dropping down to hang in his face in a bedraggled mess of lavender.

The candles flared to life just as suddenly as they’d sputtered out, the flames fuller and brighter, dancing so manically the fire burned almost higher than the candles themselves. The tang of magic was so heavy in the air it sparked across his tongue. Yuri shook the wind-tousled hair out of his face and opened his watering eyes.

The stairs leading up to the dead woman had vanished. Muzzily, still dizzy as hell and so exhausted just shaking his head made him want to cry, he forced his gaze higher to the steady stream of blood that spilled down from where the Chalice had been knocked onto its side. The gaping hole where the staircase used to be looked like a mouth opened up to drink from it.

For almost a full minute, nothing happened. Aelfric had sprawled out at the bottom of the stairs where the wind had bowled him over, but he was quick to get back up to his feet, staring into the wide black maw with suspicion on his face. Pity the fall hadn’t broken his neck.

The drizzle of blood stopped, reduced to a rhythmic drip until it dried up entirely. Yuri sucked in another sharp breath, a weak thrill of hope stabbing at his heart. Had the ritual worked without draining them completely dry? Or…

Was it too late? He and Balthus might have survived, but Constance still looked eerily still, one arm outstretched and her fingers limp. Chewing at his lip, Yuri summoned every single drop of energy he had left and pushed himself to his elbows, dragging his useless legs behind him and squirming forward before his arms gave out beneath him.

The pounding of drums damn near shattered his eardrums. His entire body flattened, his shoulders drawing up and numb fingers pressing over his ears, but it was pointless. It reverberated from the insides of his own skull, the sound of music crashing down over him, screaming trumpets and flutes and the unearthly melodies of instruments he couldn’t possibly hope to identify. The onslaught didn’t stop until it tapered into a choir of voices, and finally, the sound of hooves.

Slowly, fearfully, his hands slid away from his ears, and Yuri peeked up once again. His hope must have been in vain. He must be dying, his rapidly atrophying brain conjuring up some crazy hallucinations for him to enjoy before the icy hand of death reached out to claim him.

The white head of a horse emerged from the hole, followed by the rest of it, its hooves thundering against the stone below. Astride it was a masked woman who swayed lightly with each loping step it took.

Ah. No. It wasn’t a mask. That was just her face.

His heavy, throbbing head followed the thing, watching as the pegasus fell still a few feet before Aelfric. Its long, ghostly white tail flicked once, and the wings opened up at its sides rustled once and folded back neatly.

When one of its pupils swiveled towards him, a pinprick of black ink in an ocean of milky white, violent chills ripped a path from the top of his skull all the way down to the soles of feet. He knew with every shivering inch of his body that it was staring at him. Trembling, he tore his gaze away, and he whispered an ever-more-rare prayer to the Goddess that its rider would not be looking at him too.

But she was not. Her eyes were fixed on Aelfric, the irises such a vivid green that they burned in the dark. A shroud of equally pale hair hung around her shoulders and draped down her back in uneven pieces the color of frosted mint. From the back of her skull, two thick black horns erupted, angling downward and curling around her temples like a morbid circlet.

The world was so motionless it was as if she’d stopped time itself just to savor the abject fear that met her, but the demon wasn’t moving either. She stared from her perch down at Aelfric, her face frozen in an unmoved expression of perfect neutrality.

Before Aelfric could recover enough to speak, the chorus of spectral voices raised to such a crescendo, it would have drowned him out even if he had. A parade of monsters burst forth from the hole, as numerous and unstoppable as the snowflakes of an avalanche. They swarmed the temple, their voices intermingling with the terrified screams and shouts from Aelfric’s soldiers. His insides corkscrewed with icy fear. If it wanted its horde to kill them, neither he nor his Wolves were in any position to defend themselves whatsoever. They may have survived their bloodletting just to be mauled to death anyway.

But they didn’t seem remotely interested in him. Every pair of monstrous eyes was on their shepherd, a mixture of hunger and expectation in their gazes. At least, the ones that actually had eyes. One of them stepped over Yuri’s torso, and he could do little more than observe as its four long, spiderlike limbs worked in tandem until it was in position at the demon’s side. Dark, murky purple hair hung in its face and all down its rail-thin back, but it was not long enough to obscure the fact that it had an unnaturally wide mouth and smooth, empty skin where eyes should be.

A heavy silence choked him in the wake of the music that dropped away in a split second. Then, as one, a thousand voices rose, speaking with perfect clarity.

“Wʜʏ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ʏᴏᴜ sᴜᴍᴍᴏɴᴇᴅ ᴍᴇ?”

Her mouth didn’t move at all.

Aelfric looked ready to pass out. Yuri scoffed at him. He wasn’t the one missing a good half of his blood supply. Asshole. “Summon…?” The demon’s eyes narrowed dangerously. Her irises seemed to glow. “I-” The man stiffened and drew himself up to his full height, his hands clenching at his sides. They trembled there, despite his best efforts to hide it. “I wish for the spirit of Sitri Eisner to be returned to this plane.”

The demon sat so still he wondered if she’d even heard him. For a good half a minute, she merely peered down at him. Then, finally, she turned, looking back to the impeccably preserved corpse stretched out on its altar. When she faced Aelfric once again, her lips twitched into the cold, mirthless ghost of a smile.

“Sᴏ ɪᴛ ʜᴀs.”

Once more, her mouth did not move at all. Every bizarre creature in the room spoke for her, the medley of monstrous voices blending together in one flawless harmony that made his skin crawl.

At the same time, he and Aelfric both looked toward the body of Sitri, Yuri struggling significantly more. She didn’t move. And, while he was not exactly a mortician, she still looked very much dead to him. The pathetic light of hope died from the shepherd’s face, and it pulled into the same murderous scowl he’d seen any time the man saw fit to threaten him or his mother. “What is the meaning of this?”

The demon tilted her head back. She regarded him down the slope of her nose, and the very corner of her eyes shifted. Her reaction was hardly indicative of anything at all, but Yuri could feel it in the very cores of his bones, as certain of it as he was certain he couldn’t fall into the sky, that Aelfric had just made a terrible mistake.

Her torso lifted smoothly, and she slid from her mount. The tip of one boot touched to the ground with a delicate click, followed by the other, but when she took that first step, the floor shuddered beneath him so hard his stomach dropped. Another step shook the pillars as effectively as any earthquake. A broken piece of stone dropped from the ceiling and bounced off his skull. It wasn’t until she stopped moving that Yuri chanced a glance up over his arms.

She towered over him. Her torso was proportioned like that of a short, if not necessarily petite woman, but her arms and legs were too long to be human. They were thrust through two holes ripped into the sleeves of the black cape that billowed around her thighs. The lazy way it drifted behind her made it look as though she were under water, and thick curlicues of fog rolled out from beneath its hem.

Aelfric took several steps away from her, which was the first intelligent thing he’d done all night. She took one closer to him. What appeared to be a vine made of bones dropped out from behind her, flickering like a cat’s tail, the very tip scraping along the stone. The sound of it alone seized him in a full-bodied cringe, like it was his spine she was dragging across the ground.

“Yᴏᴜ ᴀʀᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴏɴᴊᴜʀᴇʀ.”

It was very much not a question, but Aelfric nodded as though it were. Simpleton. Yuri watched her watching him, her gaze steadfast and appraising. She lifted her arm and spread her fingers. A wicked pair of black gauntlets extended from her fingers in the shape of claws. He could feel the magic even before it materialized, a surge of power rushing out from behind her, blowing Aelfric’s stupid hair and robes back. The crest of Seiros manifested before him and then dissipated in short order. For yet another stretch of long, heavy silence, she eyed him.

Then she turned away, and those terrifying eyes caught and held Yuri’s own. His heart shuddered to a stop. He was powerless to look away from her, a helpless sparrow caught in the magnificent web of a tarantula. He breathed harder and faster, the oxygen coming so thin he was in danger of passing out. If she noticed his attempts to inchworm away from her, she certainly did not care. The demon came to a stop right in front of him, and the point of her boot slid right up beneath his chin. The tilt of her foot coaxed his head upward.

He closed his eyes tightly and grit his teeth. It figured. Of course he’d have to lick one last goddamned pair of boots, as if he could possibly have done anything to deserve dying with even a shred of dignity. The Goddess had an ugly sense of humor.

The sensation of displaced air against his cheek persuaded him to look again. He opened his eyes a fraction to see that she’d knelt in front of him, her foot having disappeared out from beneath his chin. Instead, her neck was bent, and her fingertips passed along the Fetters of Dromi slotted over his hand. His hand twitched as he felt her chilled skin breeze against his knuckles.

He hadn’t the faintest idea what she was doing, but the unexpected gentleness helped his stomach unclench slowly. Her hand glided further down, from the main body of the fetters until she touched his bare wrist and lifted. If that was all she wanted, she could have it as far as he was concerned.

Evidently, it was not. Before he was afforded a chance to react, the demon slid one of his fingers into her mouth and bit down, the point of a fang piercing the very tip. A deeply unseemly noise of protest was wrung from his throat, but she continued to ignore him, her tongue sweeping along the blood that welled up from his broken skin. She swallowed it and then sat back, still holding his wrist but allowing his finger to slip free of her lips. Absurdly, she regarded him with something like curiosity, her head tilting the slightest bit.

Just watching what little remained of his blood supply drip from his finger made him feel dizzy again. His eyes slid shut, and he somehow went yet limper than he already had been. Even the sensation of cool fingers on his forehead couldn’t rouse him. She didn’t seem to mind, though. Her hand followed the curve of his skull, her palm pressing to his forehead and his hair caught around the shape of her gauntlets.

Magic jolted through him with the force of a lightning strike. He jerked to awareness, his limbs thrumming with so much sensation they nearly burned. For the first time in too long, he could feel the rough texture of dust and stone scrape beneath his palms as he pushed himself up to his knees and struggled to stand.

She followed smoothly, pressing a hand flat to his chest. His first thought was that she intended to reach right into the cage of his ribs. That she’d only restored so much of his blood so his heart would taste better when she tore it from his insides and bit into it like an apple. But then it occurred to him that she was merely supporting him until he was steady to her satisfaction, only inclined to draw her hand away when he was no longer wobbling on his feet.

His mind was blank to an infuriating degree. He had no idea how he was meant to react; if she expected him to thank her, or run screaming from her, or follow her like some sort of lost puppy.

Apparently not that last one, because the woman held up one long finger, urging him to stay right where he was. He obeyed, watching her with mounting confusion and not a little bit of dread as she returned to Aelfric. The sudden surplus of blood was still making him lightheaded.

The man curled his lip at her, having to tilt his head back just to meet her inhuman gaze. “What are you?” he spat.

For all that her face did not change, Yuri could feel the disdain flowing from her as thickly as the fog clinging to his calves. She stepped forward once, and the chamber shook so hard that dust rained over Yuri’s hair.

Both her arms outstretched, her elbows bending and her hands lifting to curl into claws. Before her, Aelfric disappeared, plunged into the liquefied stone at his feet. Yuri stumbled backward, right into the chest of a demon poised behind him. The man who was their shepherd broke through the surface, coughing and spluttering, gold water dripping down his face where a spindly white hand covered it and pushed him back down.

He struggled and fought so hard that water sloshed onto the solid floor surrounding him, multiple disembodied arms grasping and pulling at him, scraping his face and tugging his hair and robes.

Still, he refused to go down. Or, Yuri realized, they weren’t really trying.

They were offering him the slimmest shred of hope for his survival so they could relish in ripping it away.

“A- Aelfric!” The smattering of unfamiliar voices shocked him. Yuri had forgotten they were even still there. The soldiers sprang into motion, stupidly, spears and axes and swords raised and gleaming in the candlelight. She didn’t even acknowledge them. Her demons tore into them without hesitation. He flinched, his eyes squeezed shut, but the sound of tearing flesh and crunching bones and agonized screams could still reach his ears. They could offer about as much resistance as paper could to scissors. In mere seconds, all was quiet again, save the dainty click of heels.

The woman advanced, her hips swinging and one of her long legs outstretching. Gold stone water splashed up over her boots and up to her ankles, and she came to stand where Aelfric had broken the surface for one more desperate gasp of air.

Her lips remained sealed, but another wave of demonic voices rang out from around her, formed by the mouths of every single one of them to speak in her stead.

“Wʜᴀᴛ I ᴀᴍ ᴏɴʟʏ ᴍᴀᴛᴛᴇʀs ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴏɴᴛᴇxᴛ ᴏғ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀʀᴇ.”

Almost kindly, she lifted her leg and rested the black sole of her boot against the top of his skull.

“And wʜᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀʀᴇ ɪs ᴀɴ ᴀʀʀᴏɢᴀɴᴛ ᴡᴏʀᴍ ᴡʜᴏ ᴅᴀʀᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ᴅᴇᴍᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴀᴛᴛᴇɴᴛɪᴏɴ ᴏғ ᴀ ᴄʀᴀɴᴇ.”

She pushed down, submerging him into the water until Yuri could no longer see any implication that he was even there at all. When she turned away, she flung stony water from both her feet and waved an arm, the floor solidifying behind her once again.

This demon was fucking terrifying. What the hell kind of magic was that? Who was she? What was she? He knew the consequences of asking, but his mind screamed with the desire to put something more knowable than ‘monster’ to her unflinching, emotionless face.

It was pointless to ask. She had told them, of course. She was obviously the crane to their petrified rats, tall and resplendent and poised to eat them on a whim. Yuri sidestepped the demon at his back, his heart hammering in his ears and in his throat. If he was stealthy enough, he might just be able to get away before she did decide to turn her attention on him. He could get to the others and drag them out to safety lest they meet the same fate as the soldiers scattered in pieces across the ground.

But an enormous hand clamped down over his bicep, and he found himself steered right in her direction by a beast he could not see. The woman was facing him, moving to sit as if before a seat with nothing but empty air at her back. He felt foolish for being surprised when the ground split open, and a myriad of bony white limbs reached up for her, grasping at the backs of her legs, her hips, and her shoulders to support her. It looked like a writhing millipede of arms molded into the gross caricature of a throne. It made his stomach turn.

She was staring at him, but he looked away from her to see that Constance was being helped to her feet by yet more of her entourage of creatures. She was alive.

Thank the Goddess.

Slowly, breathlessly, he turned his eyes back to the demon.

“Cʜɪʟᴅ ᴏғ Aᴜʙɪɴ. Wʜᴀᴛ ɪs ɪᴛ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴅᴇsɪʀᴇ?”

Like a fool, Yuri stared at her, his mouth open but any words drying up before they could leap past his tongue. He made several aborted attempts, which made it all the more pathetic that he could only manage to croak out, “What?”

Was she insane? He just watched her both drown Aelfric and bury him alive with the exact same slice of earth. He’d have to be suicidal to make that same mistake. Whatever he desired, it wasn’t worth that kind of price tag.

Cocking her head again, the demon graced him with a subtle curl of her lips. She bent her elbow, and another disembodied arm appeared to prop it up, whereupon she rested her temple against her curled fingers.

“Wʜᴀᴛ I ɢɪᴠᴇ ɪs ʙᴇʏᴏɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ɢʀᴀsᴘ ᴏғ ᴄᴏᴡᴀʀᴅs. Yᴏᴜʀ ᴏғғᴇʀing, I ᴀᴄᴄᴇᴘᴛ.”

Offer? Yuri wet his lips and debated whether it would be more lethal to tell the truth, or less. It was usually a much easier call to make. “I- didn’t make an offering.”

She surveyed him, her posture imperious but her face as blank as ever. Her eyes, though -- if he didn’t know any better, he would guess that they looked...amused.

“Pᴇʀʜᴀᴘs ɴᴏᴛ ɪɴᴛᴇɴᴛɪᴏɴᴀʟʟʏ. Bᴜᴛ ʏᴏᴜʀs ᴡᴀs ɴᴏᴛ ʜɪs sᴀᴄʀɪғɪᴄᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴍᴀᴋᴇ. Iᴛ ᴡᴀs ɴᴏᴛ ʜɪs ʙʟᴏᴏᴅ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄʜᴀʟɪᴄᴇ.”

The Chalice. Their blood had summoned her? But it wasn’t just his blood. He stole a glance over his shoulder to see that Balthus was back on his feet, his face flushed with the same rush of blood that likely stained his own cheeks. Hapi was being supported by two demons as well. He suspected she was only reacting as well as she was because she was still too dizzy for much brain power.

Slowly, he looked back to the woman whose ghostly green eyes seared holes through him. She’d saved their lives and destroyed their would-be murderer. And for what? Because Aelfric had failed the test that the rest of them passed?

“Nᴏᴡ. Tᴇʟʟ ᴍᴇ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ɪᴛ ɪs ʏᴏᴜ ᴅᴇsɪʀᴇ, ᴀɴᴅ I sʜᴀʟʟ ᴍᴀᴋᴇ ɪᴛ sᴏ.”

The Goddess really did have such a strange sense of humor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I sincerely hope you enjoyed it. If you're interested in seeing more, please do let me know! This was pretty self-indulgent on my part, and I'm not sure if I have an audience for something like this or not, but if you guys like it, I'd feel more confident in continuing this.
> 
> As always, comments and kudos mean the world to me. Even just keysmashes. Especially just keysmashes. Or you can come hang with me on Twitter @rad_iata or Tumblr at habenaria-radiata.
> 
> Thank you for reading! ♥


	2. Majesty

* * *

_A higher power underground_   
_From seraph skies and now to chaos bound_

_He's sitting sacred and profound_   
_In midst of sinners licking up to kiss his crown_

\---

  
Even this long after she’d said it, her symphony of ethereal voices rang in his head over and over. _Tᴇʟʟ ᴍᴇ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ɪᴛ ɪs ʏᴏᴜ ᴅᴇsɪʀᴇ, ᴀɴᴅ I sʜᴀʟʟ ᴍᴀᴋᴇ ɪᴛ sᴏ_. He could not even begin to find the right word to encapsulate how strange it felt to be on the receiving end of such a sentiment. He was usually the one saying it to someone else, and in a _profoundly_ different context.

The woman was still staring at him. Yuri stared right back at her, and he could understand exactly why Aelfric had trembled under the weight of that heavy gaze. Her eyes were so intensely green it seemed to spill out from the edge of her irises in a glowing haze. It was hard to meet them for any substantial length of time; she made him feel like he knew what it meant to try and wage a thumb war with your eyes. If it truly was a fight they were having, he was losing. Badly.

He opened his mouth, inhaling once and steeling himself to answer her when a girlish sputter of indignation drew their attention away from each other. The enormous horse-headed monster trying to help Constance up had shrunk away from her, clutching one of its hands that’d just had the pleasure of acquainting itself with her closed fan. “Unhand me this instant, you- you beast of grotesquerie!” She huffed, extremely loudly and oh-so-very put upon, and adjusted her twisted skirt with a haughty thrust of her hands. “I shall not abide such brutish treatment--”

Not eager to see Constance buried in an untimely and ignoble grave, Yuri hissed and cut his hand through the air. “Knock it off, Constance.”

Outrage schooled across her pale features, and she slapped the edge of her fan right across the back of his outstretched hand. Fuck, it hurt. She packed a surprising amount of force when she felt slighted enough. “How dare you presume to order me about with that deceitful tongue of yours! Need I remind you, this mess is entirely your doing. You and I shall have _words_ , rest assured. Now, if I may be so bold,” she said, whirling on the demon woman with a bounce of her curls and adopting a tone that suggested she was going to be bold regardless of whether she _may_ or not, “who -- and _what_ \-- are you?”

Yuri’s stomach disappeared into nothing. Constance had been unconscious for most of that affair. She couldn’t possibly understand what she was asking, or have any idea that she might share in the gruesome fate that’d befallen their shepherd. Before he could speak to her defense, or fruitlessly tell her to shut the hell up again, or put himself between her and her imminent demise, the demon regarded her with a slow smile and tilted her head against her bent fingers. A few tendrils of pale hair curled around the sharp points of her gauntlet.

The monsters surrounding her opened their mouths in unison.

“Bʏʟᴇᴛʜ.”

A shriek of surprise burst from her, and Constance leapt back closer to him and gripped her fan to her chest. Yuri was too busy being relieved to laugh at her. Instead, he hooked his elbow around her and shoved backwards, shooting her a glare of warning. She could be pissed at him all she wanted later, just so long as they all made it out of here alive.

“Wh- She did _not_ answer my question!” Constance complained, her fingers curling around his bicep and her aggravated face appearing over his shoulder. Yuri planted his hand over it and pushed her back again, ignoring the high-pitched protest muffled into his palm. He got the distinct impression that Constance was wrong. ‘Byleth’ was almost certainly the answer to both.

“Yuri-bird?” He and Constance both turned to see Hapi leaning heavily against Balthus’ side, his arm around her and supporting her back. “You wanna tell us what the heck is going on?”

It was perfectly fair for them to assume that he knew to answer that, but he was just as in the dark about this scary woman as the rest of them. Hell, even Aelfric hadn’t expected this outcome. He supposed that was what happened when you tried to cobble together a thousand-year-old ritual from crumpled up manuscripts older than some territories. Yuri shook his head at her and turned back around to face the demon, who hadn’t so much as moved. Silent as ever, she regarded them all, her eyes sweeping across the four of them. They were so bright that the color of her iris seemed to leave an afterimage that burned through the air like a ribbon of green light. Finally, she leaned back, and the interlocking panel of arms tilted with her.

“Yᴏᴜ ᴅɪᴅ ɴᴏᴛ ᴄᴏɴsᴇɴᴛ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ʀɪᴛᴜᴀʟ.”

They glanced between each other, then the other three looked to him for guidance. Again, Yuri shook his head. Of course they hadn’t consented. They hadn’t been extended the opportunity to be active participants just as lambs weren’t asked to sanction their own slaughter. Aelfric had always known they would say no. As infuriating as it was, the irony of their class moniker had never been lost on Yuri, nor on their shepherd. They were nothing more than sheep in the clothing of wolves.

Beside him, Hapi let go of Balthus, her attention shifting to the still corpse of Sitri. “Uhm...Aelfric said he needed all our blood for the ritual to work. Why are we still alive? Did you...save us?”

“I ᴅɪᴅ.”

At this, the demon tilted forward again, and the millipede of arms rolled upwards in an ocean wave of white to fit against the curve of her spine. The grossed out noise that burst from Balthus made him snort. Byleth ignored him, however, her long arms folding against her knee.

“I ᴀᴍ ɴᴏᴛ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ sᴜᴍᴍᴏɴᴇᴅ ɪɴ ᴄᴜᴘɪᴅɪᴛʏ. A ᴘʀɪᴄᴇ ᴘᴀɪᴅ ᴡɪᴛʜ sᴛᴏʟᴇɴ ɢᴏᴏᴅs ɪs ᴀ sᴀᴄʀɪғɪᴄᴇ ᴡɪᴛʜᴏᴜᴛ ᴍᴇᴀɴɪɴɢ. Iᴛ ᴡᴀs ʏᴏᴜʀ ʙʟᴏᴏᴅ ᴀᴛ ᴍʏ ᴀʟᴛᴀʀ. Iɴ ᴇxᴄʜᴀɴɢᴇ, ᴍʏ ʙᴏᴏɴ ɪs ᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜʀ ғᴇᴇᴛ. I ᴡɪʟʟ ʜᴏɴᴏʀ ᴡʜᴀᴛᴇᴠᴇʀ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀsᴋ.”

No one spoke for a short bit, no doubt grappling with the enormity of exactly what she was offering. Whatever they asked was...a lot. They all had big dreams, some of them a little further outside the bounds of attainability than others. Balthus was the first to recover, and he glanced from the demon, to the other Wolves, then back to the demon. “What, like...all four of us?”

“Yᴇs.”

Silence collapsed atop them like a rain cloud. Yuri could feel Byleth’s stare settle back over him, and he lifted his eyes to meet it. He refused to flinch. He stood straighter, staring into her white mask of a face. He hadn’t noticed before, but there were ivory-colored lilies nestled beneath the curves of her horns. She reminded him uncomfortably of some dark mirror-universe doppelgänger of Rhea, but with more sensible hair. And with much bigger tits.

A harsh elbow to the sternum knocked him back, and Constance flounced in front of the demon, snapping open her fan and treating her to that ridiculous laugh of hers. “Well! We would be terribly remiss to turn down such a magnanimous offer! To start with, you may-”

Yuri covered her entire mouth with one hand and yanked her backwards, offering Byleth the most pleasant smile that had ever graced his pretty mouth. “We’ll pass. We thank you for your boundless generosity, but saving our lives is ‘boon’ enough. We couldn’t possibly ask for anything else.”

Once more, he found himself bearing the full brunt of her haunting gaze. Byleth cocked her head, and a tiny little frown seized her mouth.

“I ᴛʜɪɴᴋ ɴᴏᴛ.”

Her pale eyes narrowed only by a sliver, but it was enough. As much as it galled him, a cold stab of fear lanced right through his chest. Slowly, Byleth rose to her feet, and he took an involuntary step back with Constance still thrashing in his grip. Fuck, she had _not_ been this tall before. Her shadow practically swallowed them both.

“Dɪssᴀᴛɪsғᴀᴄᴛɪᴏɴ ɪs ɪɴ ʏᴏᴜʀ ɴᴀᴛᴜʀᴇ. Tʜᴇʀᴇ ɪs ᴀʟᴡᴀʏs sᴏᴍᴇᴛʜɪɴɢ ᴍᴏʀᴇ ᴛʜᴀɴ ᴡʜᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ʜᴀᴠᴇ, ᴀɴᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡɪʟʟ ᴀʟᴡᴀʏs ᴄʀᴀᴠᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴄʟᴀɪᴍ ɪᴛ.”

She took a step forward, shaking the walls surrounding them and forcing him back yet further. As both her long, slender arms raised, Yuri’s grip on Constance went savagely tight. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to steel himself before they both found themselves dunked into a tank of liquid stone and left to die, their skeletons twisted together in a perfect helix of bone for all eternity.

Something hard and heavy scattered across the ground, and Yuri opened his eyes to see a rain of fat coins materializing from thin air and bouncing off the stone floor, steadily gathering into a pile at her pointed black boots.

“I ᴄᴀɴ ᴘʀᴏᴠɪᴅᴇ ɢᴏʟᴅ, ɪғ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ɪs ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴡɪsʜ.”

The last few pieces fell from the insides of her sleeves and slid down to rest at Yuri’s feet. He let go of Constance and looked to the side to see the spark of interest in Balthus’ dark eyes. That much gold could clear even his unfathomable mountain of debt, with enough left over to buy an entire army dedicated to the protection of Kupala.

One of her hands fell past her hip, and the other extended above her head, rotating in a smooth circle. All around them the chamber transformed, the dreary yellow stones underfoot replaced with tiles of smooth, extravagant marble. The walls and the squat square pillars changed too, outfitted like the most decadent interior of a noble’s home.

“I ᴄᴀɴ ᴘʀᴏᴠɪᴅᴇ sᴛᴀᴛᴜs, ɪғ ʏᴏᴜ ᴘʀᴇғᴇʀ. A ʙᴇᴛᴛᴇʀ ʜᴏᴍᴇ. Tʜᴇ ʟᴏᴠᴇ ᴏғ ᴍᴇɴ. Wᴏᴍᴇɴ.”

Byleth brought both hands before her chest and summoned an ancient tome that floated between her palms. It turned over, cracked along the spine, and rustled its pages as if to entice them in a strange, bibliophilic come-hither.

“Iғ ɴᴏɴᴇ ᴏғ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ɪs ᴛᴏ ʏᴏᴜʀ ʟɪᴋɪɴɢ, ᴛʜᴇɴ I ᴄᴀɴ ᴏғғᴇʀ ᴀʀᴄᴀɴᴇ ᴋɴᴏᴡʟᴇᴅɢᴇ ᴏʀ ᴘᴏᴡᴇʀ. Yᴏᴜ ɴᴇᴇᴅ ᴏɴʟʏ ᴀsᴋ, ᴀɴᴅ ɪᴛ ɪs ʏᴏᴜʀs.”

Constance was positively breathless. She craned her neck this way and that, taking in the opulent sight of the newly outfitted chamber. He had to wonder if this was what her home looked like before it was ripped out from under her.

She had to be better than this. _They_ had to be better than this.

None of them could really be tempted by any of this display, could they? Byleth was a fucking demon. Trusting any ‘gift’ that she offered would be akin to a mouse trusting the beautiful wedge of cheese laid out on an unsprung silver platter. He knew his Wolves. They were smarter than that.

Against his will, an ugly voice breathed into his ear. _The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese._

Savagely, he jerked his head and quashed that callous siren whisper by force. The Ashen Wolves were his family. Aside from his beloved mother, they were all he had in a world that taught him there was no single part of himself that couldn’t be traded for coin. He didn’t want to be the second mouse. He didn’t want for there to be a first mouse at all. He would protect them from anything he had to, even from themselves, no matter what hideous instinct for self-preservation arose in his chest, or how much resentment it cost him in the end. Better they be resentful than dead.

Hapi stepped forward, her body lined with exhaustion, but her eyes bright and her mouth set into a suspicious frown. “So? What’s the catch?” she asked.

Goddess, he could kiss her. He wouldn’t. He’d pretended like he was going to once, and she’d backhanded him so hard his face was red for almost two days. But he could.

Wordlessly, Byleth peered down her nose at her.

“C’mon. You’d give us all that just for some blood? You’re not gonna, I don’t know, give us what we want, but then it comes with some ironic side-effect? Like, you’ll magic up some amazing feast that starves you to death? Give us makeup that makes you supernaturally beautiful and then poisons you or something?”

For ages, Byleth didn’t react beyond to stare, cocking her head slightly. The slow, befuddled expression that pulled across her face was so cute it coaxed a surprised burst of laughter from him. At either of her shoulders, the demons standing by her sides turned to look at each other.

“...I told you the little dirtchildren were demented.”

The singular, feminine voice shocked the hell out of him. What?! Her demons could talk for themselves this whole time? He’d just assumed they were some sort of mindless hive for Byleth to puppet as she saw fit, but that was clearly not so. The one closest to him scoffed and clucked her tongue, propping all four of her hands on her exaggeratedly sharp, bony hips. Like the other one, she also had no eyes, the skin beneath her straight, vividly hot pink bangs smooth and empty. The rest of her hair was bound up in the shape of a hairbow, and a spray of some strange red flower burst from the center of her chest.

The other one at Byleth’s side scrunched its nose and tilted its head back. It was the purple-haired monster that stepped over him earlier. What he’d thought were two sunbursts of little horns turned out to be a pair of black water lilies blooming from the sides of its skull. “So they are. I suppose they think we have nothing better to do.” Its voice was surprisingly masculine, but then again, people probably thought that about Yuri all the goddamned time.

“Don’t they realize that having to wear makeup to be beautiful is punishment enough? Tragic.”

Offense seized him in its grip, his lip curling sourly. Like he was going to take criticism from some spider-bitch with no face. Fuck her. They probably measured attractiveness by how many degrees they could spin their head the wrong way.

Oblivious to his internal fit, the purple one turned his head up toward Byleth and gestured with one long, spindly hand. “Byleth.” He said her name with the same weight and gravity as if it were a title. She tipped her head down toward him and waited for him to continue. “If they desire what the bonesacks always do, I imagine they would prefer to ask you alone.”

The pink one snorted loudly and flung a dismissive hand. “That mulleted ape before certainly wasn’t too shy to ask with an audience. It’s fine. Just scare them into telling you. I’m bored.”

Well. That much was true. Yuri glanced back over to Sitri’s body as Constance did the same, her fan touching the curve of her jaw and a look of open confusion settling over her pointed features. “Is there a reason he ought to have been shy to ask for the return of a lost soul? I should think that would be a perfectly common request!”

Once again, Byleth’s flanking demons looked at each other. Inasmuch as they could without eyes. It was kind of amazing to see how they could make such incredulous expressions without having any eyebrows. When they both turned their empty faces toward her again, they each thrust a hand to their outermost hip. “You’re right,” the purple one mused, “I’m sure he just kept her down here all this time to braid her hair.”

“That’s such a virgin question to ask.”

“Personally, I don’t see why he’d bother to try resurrecting her in the first place. With that hair and that face? I’d think it would work out better for him this way. You can’t say no if you’re dead.”

The hot pink one tittered, fluttering her fingers to her lips. “Maybe that was the problem.”

“Wh-!” Constance spluttered, her face scalding so red he waited for steam to explode from her ears. “Ugh!! Why, you impertinent, vulgarious fiends--”

One of Byleth’s hands shot up into the air, and a thick silence robbed each of them of their ability to speak at all. Even the demons ceased their insulting banter in favor of rejoining the demonic choir that made up Byleth’s ‘voice’.

“Eɴᴏᴜɢʜ. Cʜɪʟᴅ ᴏғ Nᴏᴀ, ʏᴏᴜ ᴀʀᴇ ᴄᴏʀʀᴇᴄᴛ. Tᴏ ʏᴇᴀʀɴ ғᴏʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ɪs ᴀs ɪɴᴇxᴏʀᴀʙʟᴇ ɪɴ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴋɪɴᴅ ᴀs ʏᴏᴜʀ ɴᴇᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ʙʀᴇᴀᴛʜᴇ. Iғ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ɪs ʏᴏᴜʀ ʀᴇᴏ̨ᴜᴇsᴛ, I ᴅᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ғᴀᴜʟᴛ ʏᴏᴜ. Bᴜᴛ I ᴄᴀɴɴᴏᴛ ʀᴇᴄᴏᴍᴍᴇɴᴅ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴍᴀᴋᴇ ɪᴛ.”

All of them stayed quiet, the desire for her to elaborate so thick in the air it was palpable. When she declined to do so, Hapi took a breath, her fingers gliding along the inseam of Constance’s elbow and squeezing. “Why not?”

Byleth’s head canted lower, her gaze sweeping over Hapi and her mouth drawing into a sinister smile. For the first time, it reached her eyes, an impish gleam to them that was far more frightening than even her previous dispassion.

“Asᴋ ʏᴏᴜʀ Aʀᴄʜʙɪsʜᴏᴘ ʜᴏᴡ ᴡᴇʟʟ ɪᴛ ᴡᴏʀᴋᴇᴅ ᴏᴜᴛ ғᴏʀ ʜᴇʀ.”

Yuri stiffened, his fingernails biting into the palms of each hand. He’d seen the materials Aelfric was working with to put this accursed Rite together. There was no faking that kind of age. Some of the parchments he’d discovered were so brittle they were in danger of crumbling into dust if they handled them just a smidgen too indelicately. He’d said it had been nine hundred and ninety-five years since the ritual was last performed. How could Rhea have made the attempt? She would have needed their Crests for the Chalice to do any good, and those had been lost for years and years before they spontaneously manifested in the four of them.

...Right?

Squeezing his eyes shut, he dispelled those nagging thoughts from his head and then opened them again. There would be time enough later to try and tease out that particular puzzle; for now, he had a demon implying very heavily that she knew the Archbishop and delighted in her suffering. He’d always suspected Rhea was even shadier than Constance. Now he knew he was right, if she was running around dabbling with sultry demon women who promised to make dreams come true.

“Right, right. Noted, your Imminence.” Yuri pressed a hand to his sternum and swept forward in an exaggerated bow. “We won’t ask for you to reanimate the dead. In fact, I’ll do you one better. We won’t ask for anything at all. The four of us desired not to die, and so we haven’t, thanks to our gracious benefactor. Making any further requests of you just seems like bad manners, don’t you think?”

The smile fell away from her face. That smooth mask of indifference dropped into place in its stead, Byleth tilting her head back and watching him as a bored hawk might survey a rabbit it was deciding whether or not to eat on principle.

When she spoke again, her tone sent gooseflesh rippling up the lengths of his arms.

“Tʜᴀᴛ ɪs ɴᴏᴛ ᴀᴄᴄᴇᴘᴛᴀʙʟᴇ.”

Not allowing the fear to show on his face was among the more challenging endeavors he’d ever undertaken. Yuri swallowed and tipped his head back further as she closed the distance between them. “...Be that as at may, unless you can force me to want something, I’m afraid I have no desires for you to fill.”

He wasn’t prepared for her hand to spread across his chest, her palm resting directly over his heart. For a brief moment, all was still. Then every single one of his organs pushed forward at once, his heart straining against his ribs as if to escape right into her grasp. It stopped just as suddenly, and Yuri gasped for air to replace all the oxygen that’d rushed out of him when his lungs slammed into the front of his torso.

“Lɪᴇ ᴛᴏ ᴍᴇ ᴀs ʏᴏᴜ ʟɪᴋᴇ. Iᴛ ɪs ᴀɴ ᴇxᴇʀᴄɪsᴇ ɪɴ ғᴜᴛɪʟɪᴛʏ.”

What the hell was that? Eyes wide and watering, Yuri yanked his head back up, one of his hands clawing at his chest as he continued to struggle for air. She moved yet closer to him, forcing him to scramble backward before her knee could crash into him in her advance.

“Tʜᴇʀᴇ ᴀʀᴇ ᴀ ɢʀᴇᴀᴛ ᴍᴀɴʏ ᴅᴇsɪʀᴇs ғᴇsᴛᴇʀɪɴɢ ᴡɪᴛʜɪɴ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴛᴇɴᴅᴇʀ ʜᴇᴀʀᴛ. Yᴏᴜ ᴡɪsʜ ᴛᴏ ᴘʀᴏᴛᴇᴄᴛ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴍᴏᴛʜᴇʀ. Yᴏᴜ ᴡɪsʜ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴀᴇɢɪs ʙᴇғᴏʀᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʟғ ᴄᴜʙs ᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜʀ ʙᴀᴄᴋ. Iɴ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴠᴀɴɪᴛʏ, ʏᴏᴜ ᴡɪsʜ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ᴇᴠᴇɴ ᴍᴏʀᴇ ʙᴇᴀᴜᴛɪғᴜʟ ᴛʜᴀɴ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀʟʀᴇᴀᴅʏ ᴛʜɪɴᴋ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀʀᴇ. Fᴇᴀʀ ɪs ɴᴏᴛ ᴀ sᴜʙsᴛɪᴛᴜᴛᴇ ғᴏʀ ᴇɴʟɪɢʜᴛᴇɴᴍᴇɴᴛ, ʟɪᴛᴛʟᴇ sᴇᴡᴇʀ ᴋɪɴɢ. I ᴋɴᴏᴡ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀs sᴜʀᴇʟʏ ᴀs I ᴋɴᴏᴡ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ʀɪɢʜᴛ ɴᴏᴡ, ᴡʜᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡɪsʜ ғᴏʀ ᴍᴏsᴛ ɪɴ ᴀʟʟ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ ɪs ᴛʜᴀᴛ I ᴄᴏᴜʟᴅ ɴᴏᴛ ᴅɪsᴛɪɴɢᴜɪsʜ ᴏɴᴇ ғʀᴏᴍ ᴛʜᴇ ᴏᴛʜᴇʀ.”

Goddess help him. She had just physically pulled all his childish wants from his chest and relished in dangling them in front of him. And it fucking hurt too. His insides were still revolting after that punch into the back of his sternum.

In the distance, the clang of metal and voices could be heard. Byleth lifted her head, as did every demon and every Wolf in the mausoleum.

Beside him, Byleth smiled.

She slid around him in a circle, the points of her gauntlet dragging lightly across his chest until she planted herself behind him and draped along his back. Both her long arms dropped around him in a loose embrace, and she tilted her head to press her lips to his ear.

“Gɪᴠᴇ ᴛʜᴇ Aʀᴄʜʙɪsʜᴏᴘ ᴍʏ ʀᴇɢᴀʀᴅs.”

Despite the sheer number of voices, it sounded like a whisper meant for him alone.

She breezed a tiny kiss to the shell of his ear and let him go. All at once, the demons began to vanish, crawling up walls and pillars, some of them with armfuls of severed limbs. When he looked down in a daze, he could see that the slaughtered remains of Aelfric’s soldiers were gone.

“Yuri-bird? Are you okay?”

Hapi appeared at his elbow with a soft frown on her face, Constance and Balthus not far behind her. All he could manage was a silent nod in response before he was turning away, facing the open hallway where the cacophony of footsteps steadily grew louder.

Sure enough, the Knights of Seiros appeared, weapons at the ready, and they parted right down the middle to make way for Lady Rhea herself.

Contempt bubbled up in his chest and promptly burst.

Great timing, assholes.

The Archbishop approached him first, leaving her knights to disperse through the mausoleum in search of enemies they wouldn’t be finding. One of her pale hands extended, reaching for his face. Yuri tilted his head back before she could touch him. He couldn’t stop himself from rolling his eyes upward to see if he could catch a glimpse of Byleth’s horde, but he could not. The shadows were thick, obscuring the vaulted ceilings from view.

He dropped his head back to see Rhea eyeing him, her arm falling back down to her side in acquiescence. “I am glad to see you are unharmed.”

_No thanks to you._

“Where is Aelfric?”

Ah. Right. Spreading his feet, Yuri looked back to the ground between his boots. Cheerfully, he threw his hands up. “Dunno,” he lied. “He just vanished. I guess that Rite of his didn’t work very well after all.”

Rhea was frowning at him. She was almost as good as maintaining a poker face as her demonic doppelgänger was, but not quite. He could see the hint of suspicion in the squint of her eyes. Still, she did not question him. “I see.” She sighed, then, casting her gaze over to the serene body of Sitri Eisner. “Even if life could be returned to her, her spirit could not. It was a foolish endeavor.”

She would know, wouldn’t she? Curiosity flared to life inside him, Byleth’s many-layered words turning over in his head.

But he knew better than to try and play inquisitor to this woman who had her enemies dispatched for far lesser offenses. He reassured her he was fine as many times as it took to get her off his damn back, but even then she and her obnoxious knights insisted on staying well past their welcome.

It wasn’t until the wee hours of the morning that he was allowed to drag himself into bed, collapsing face-first into his sheets and closing his eyes.

The shell of his ear still tingled with the phantom sensation of lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my goodness, thank you all so much for your incredibly generous comments. It gave me the confidence I needed to go full steam ahead. I sincerely hope you enjoyed chapter 2! ♥


	3. Lady of Silence

* * *

_I was carried on a wolf's back_  
_To corrupt humanity_

_I will pummel it with opulence_  
_With corpulence and greed_

\---

You didn’t get to be lord of the underground without facing down all the things other people had nightmares about, so Yuri was hardly a stranger to frightening situations. He’d been cut. Stabbed. Burned. Violated. He’d even lost a few fingers once, but he’d been in close enough proximity to a good healer to have them reattached with surprisingly little fuss.

But there was nothing quite like the mind-bending terror of pursuit.

It wasn’t the thrill of a chase he might initiate to bait some idiot brigand, where he always had the upper hand and the unmatchable pace of a trickster god. It was the pure, animal fear of being hunted. The all-consuming dismay of an arrogant wolf thinking itself safe at the apex only to find a bear’s jaws closing around its neck. It was the bitter knowledge that your goddess-granted speed was the only thing preserving your existence, and someone had filled your boots with cement.

The air burned in his lungs like flaming pitch. He struggled to move, to clear more of the seemingly endless hallway stretched before him, but his calves felt as though they’d been strapped with weights. The horde was almost upon him. The breath of a thousand creatures was hot on his neck, their footsteps rocking the ground beneath him and the writhing mass of shadow steadily consuming his own until it was impossible to see.

The stones underfoot cracked and split, and a long white hand shot up and gripped him by the ankle. He pitched forward so hard and so fast that it was pure luck he avoided smashing his nose into the ground. His cheekbone bore the brunt of the impact instead, the entire side of his face throbbing dully and his ribs stabbing into the floor with every desperate breath he took.

Scrambling up to his hands and knees, he made one last-ditch attempt to crawl away, but the hand pulled him backward in a savage yank and flipped him over with all the civility of some of his more tactless clients. He wasn’t even afforded the opportunity to try and kick it. Three more hands emerged from the earth, one of them fastening around his unbound ankle and the other two pinning down his thighs. Another pair of arms erupted to encircle his hips, and four more restrained both his hands and his elbows.

Flat on his back and utterly defenseless, he could do nothing but face his imminent death head on, the hungry horde bearing down over him and the steady tap of high-heels looming ever closer. Yuri tipped his head back and allowed himself to go slack under the monstrously powerful arms keeping him pinned like an insect beneath glass. He recognized when it was pointless to do anything other than fold. Along the ceiling and clinging to the surrounding bricks, violently pink spiders watched him with voyeuristic interest. He didn’t have to see their tiny, awful little faces to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were enjoying his misery.

One final arm slithered over his shoulders and bent. Its elbow dug right into the tender dip beneath his sternum, and its gnarled fingers closed around his face and forced his chin downward.

The demon had arrived.

She stood over him, leering down with her otherworldly eyes. He knew that if the eternal flames were to reach up and swallow him, they would burn green as chrysoprase. The woman stepped over him and stood there, both her feet framing his waist. For awhile, that was all she did. Then she smiled, a terrifying curve of her pale lips, and she dropped to both her knees and spilled forward.

It was the most surreal thing in the world to realize that she was not touching him at all, yet his body was alive with the sensations of her ghoulish army of limbs. Both her own hands were splayed flat at either side of his head, but he could feel fingers he couldn’t see glide through his hair and pass lightly down his chest. Two of them wriggled up beneath his shirt, their skin so cold he sucked in his stomach on instinct.

“Aʀᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ʀᴇᴀᴅʏ, ʟɪᴛᴛʟᴇ ᴍᴏᴜsᴇ?”

Fuck. No. Yuri clamped his mouth shut, the last of his defiance welling up inside him. Like hell he was going to give in that easily. He thrashed one more time against the arms keeping him bound to the floor, but they only responded by interlocking all the tighter, pushing him harder into the floor.

His ankles screamed. The backs of his hips and his shoulders strained with the enormous pressure bearing down over them, so much so he was certain that the stones would begin to crack under his body. Still, he refused to speak, forcing his eyes open and up toward his true captor. She gazed back at him, her smooth face so blank it could almost pass for serene.

His teeth had begun to ache in his effort to keep his mouth shut. It was going to take more than her asking politely for him to give up the game -- he just hadn’t expected her to go so far as to oblige him. Byleth lifted up from his heaving chest and watched as the hand at his chin curled and twisted, its thumb and forefingers spreading wide, then crooking at the joints to bend into the shape of a bony pincer. It was just high enough over his face for him to see it, and exactly high enough for him to feel regret drop low into his stomach before the pincer snapped shut. Its fingers drilled so hard into the sides of his jaw that an agonized cry was wrung right from his throat.

Again, Byleth smiled, and again, she pushed downwards until her breasts flattened to his chest. She still didn’t touch him herself, but the hands not currently prying his jaw open by force were toying with his body as if she were teasing him. Her head tilted, and she spoke against his parted lips.

“Cᴏᴍᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ᴡʜɪsᴘᴇʀ ɪɴ ᴍʏ ᴇᴀʀ.”

Yuri awoke with his heart lurching in his chest, hammering an impressive rhythm against his ribs for feeling like it was trying to beat through a thick layer of molasses. He groaned and shifted onto his side, but the sheets tangled around his bare legs were a pretty effective impediment. He collapsed onto his back with one arm thrown over his face and exhaled deeply.

What a bizarre dream.

He must have broken some sort of fever in the night to be having such vivid and outlandish nightmares. He didn’t normally dream like that; they were usually much more mundane and less liable to wake him up with a coronary. Besides, he’d had enough realistic nightmares over the course of his life that he was the last person who needed to be inventing more things to fear in the night. So strange. Maybe he was just really hard up if he was dreaming about freaky demon women feeling him up with someone else’s hands. It had, admittedly, been awhile since he had a partner that was anything other than transactional.

The fog of sleep was slow to ebb away, but ebb it did, along with the acid of adrenaline that’d blazed a fiery path through his veins. Slowly, he opened his eyes and managed a few sluggish blinks toward the ceiling. The longer he lay there, the more uncertain he became that he’d dreamed all of it. Exactly how much of it was fiction? That woman couldn’t possibly have been real. Then again, if he’d always possessed that level of imagination, he could have made a living doing something other than turning tricks or attempting to assassinate neurotic shut-ins.

Grumpy and tired, Yuri curled his lip and pushed himself to his hands to scrub at his face with the heel of his palm. If it all was just a dream, it was a pretty damn good one. He still felt like he really had almost all his blood drained the night before.

Something moved in the dark. The candelabra hanging from the ceiling roared to life, and Yuri snapped his head up towards the three figures standing over his bed and leering at him.

“Fuck!!”

He slammed back into the wall, clutching the sheets to his naked chest. Fuck, fuck, fuck. She was real. She was real and she was standing in his room with those obnoxious demons from before, both of them judging him with their creepy lack of eyes. How long had they been there?!

“It’s about time you woke up,” the girl commented, turning her head away from him and ‘examining’ the long, sharp tips of her fingers. “Catching up on your beauty sleep, huh?”

The entirety of his heart being lodged in his throat made it difficult to speak, but Yuri made a valiant effort to swallow it and get some air back into his lungs. “Do you fucking _mind_? I normally charge for this kind of view, you know?”

Byleth’s nose wrinkled ever so slightly.

“Yᴏᴜʀ ᴄᴏᴍғᴏʀᴛ ɪs ɪᴍᴍᴀᴛᴇʀɪᴀʟ ᴛᴏ ᴍᴇ.”

Despite there only being two demons visible in his room, he could still hear the echo of many more layered beneath their voices. Suspiciously, he squinted up at the ceiling as if he might see more of her horde hiding up in it, but for all that he could make out, it was just the three of them hovering by his bed like night terrors. “Great. Noted. Eugh, have you been watching me sleep all night?”

“Yᴇs.”

Yuri had no smart retort for that. Blunt and entirely shameless too. Quite the combination. He supposed it made a degree of sense; it must be easy not to give a hot shit about decorum when you could manipulate the physical world around you without blinking. If anyone had a problem with you, what the hell were they going to do about it?

Question of the moment, really. Now to figure out what _he_ was going to do about it. Yuri sagged backwards, his eyelids heavy with exhaustion and his legs still twined with the sheets knotted around him. “Scaring the hell out of me in person wasn’t enough? You had to do it in my dreams too?”

Just like they had the night previous, the smaller demons flanking Byleth turned to face each other. Cocking her head back in Yuri’s direction, the pink one grinned so wide it flashed all her blunt white teeth. “My, my. Dreaming of us, were you? We must have left quite the impression. Or maybe it was our unhallowed Lady of Silence who ensnared your interest? Is that your wish?”

The other one scoffed too, propping one elbow in his hand and curling the fingers of his other against his face. “Is that true? That’s pretty ballsy of you, wishing for the Lady Herself, but I suppose it’s up to Her whether or not to grant such a cocky request.”

It was obvious they were taunting him, but it was difficult to focus on mustering up any kind of response when he was so distracted by what they were actually saying. Wishing for Byleth? She _had_ said that she would give them whatever they asked, but it hadn’t even occurred to him that she might have been including herself in that offer. Against his will, his eyes dipped down from her face, to the ample cleavage spilling up from the brace of her black armor, then down to the plush seam of her thighs where they spread into the shape of a Y. Heat pooled low into his stomach right before the ice of distaste chased it out. Beautiful though she might be, if she even had anything down there, he would bet good coin that it had teeth.

He shook his head and looked back up into her unmoved face. “Thanks, but no thanks. I already told you before, I’m not interested in making a request.”

Each of them faced him at the same time to the point it felt synchronized. It felt like three pairs of eyes boring into him rather than only one, but he couldn’t tell if it was his imagining the other two could see, or if Byleth’s unsettling gaze was doing the bulk of the work.

Finally, the pink one bared her teeth at him and curled her long fingers into claws. “You are so annoying. I want to go home. Let’s just kill him.”

“Lɪʟɪ.”

Byleth only looked at her, her head swiveling and her eyes casting downward toward her ill-mannered retainer. It was such a mild reaction, but it was as effective as it needed to be. Lili’s claws sank downward, grudging as hell, but at least she no longer looked like she was going to lunge for his jugular. “Your name is Lili, huh?” It surprised him that something so girlish and...normal could be the moniker of a faceless ghoul.

She hissed at him and jabbed a pointy fingertip at his face. “ _Ardat_ Lili. And it’s The Handmaiden to you, mongrel.”

Yuri sneered back at her. “Don’t flatter yourself. I don’t refer to anyone with an article.” Maybe a little hypocritical of him, but who was counting? Besides, he didn’t exactly call _himself_ the Savage Mockingbird. How pretentious would that be?

Their childish bickering was interrupted by a low chuckle from the purple demon. “Stop baiting the human, Lili.” More congenially, he swung over to Yuri and folded his arms loosely across his middle. “If our presence is such an inconvenience to you, then you know the quickest solution to be rid of us. Make a request for Byleth to grant, and we’ll be on our way.”

That easy, huh? Yuri’s lips slid into an irritated frown, and he reached up to drag his fingers through his sleep-mussed hair. “Why are you so damned insistent that I do? Can’t I just refuse your ‘boon’? I’m. Not. Interested.”

This time, both of the demons looked irritated, and he suspected that the purple one was probably tempted to kill him now too. The silence that overtook them all stretched on long enough to become uncomfortable, but he refused to be the only one to show it.

His room was small enough that the fog rolling out from beneath Byleth’s cloak was starting to haze his vision.

Finally, Byleth narrowed her eyes at him.

“Yᴏᴜ ғᴜɴᴅᴀᴍᴇɴᴛᴀʟʟʏ ᴍɪsᴜɴᴅᴇʀsᴛᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇ sɪᴛᴜᴀᴛɪᴏɴ.”

She advanced on him, the limited perimeter of the room making her quaking steps sound all the more volatile. As if she hadn’t already made him feel small enough last night, now she had to be threatening him while he was naked.

“Yᴏᴜ sᴇᴇᴍ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇ ᴜɴᴅᴇʀ ᴛʜᴇ ɪᴍᴘʀᴇssɪᴏɴ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴛʜɪs ɪs ᴀɴ ɪɴᴠɪᴛᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ғᴏʀ ʏᴏᴜ ᴛᴏ ʙᴀʀɢᴀɪɴ ᴡɪᴛʜ ᴀ ᴅᴇᴠɪʟ. Yᴏᴜ ᴀʀᴇ ᴍɪsᴛᴀᴋᴇɴ. Yᴏᴜ ᴀɴᴅ I ʜᴀᴠᴇ ᴀʟʀᴇᴀᴅʏ ᴍᴀᴅᴇ ᴀɴ ᴀɢʀᴇᴇᴍᴇɴᴛ ᴡʀɪᴛᴛᴇɴ ɪɴ ʏᴏᴜʀ ʙʟᴏᴏᴅ. Yᴏᴜ ᴍᴀʏ ɴᴏᴛ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ʜᴇʟᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴏ̨ᴜɪʟʟ, ʙᴜᴛ ɪᴛ ɪs ʏᴏᴜʀ sɪɢɴᴀᴛᴜʀᴇ ɴᴇᴠᴇʀᴛʜᴇʟᴇss. I ᴀᴄᴄᴇᴘᴛᴇᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴠᴇʀʏ ғᴏʀᴄᴇ ᴏғ ʏᴏᴜʀ ʟɪғᴇ. I'ᴍ ᴏғғᴇʀɪɴɢ ᴡʜᴀᴛᴇᴠᴇʀ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀsᴋ ɪɴ ᴇxᴄʜᴀɴɢᴇ. Rᴇғᴜsɪɴɢ ᴛᴏ ᴅᴏ sᴏ ɪs ᴍᴇʀᴇʟʏ ᴘʀᴏʟᴏɴɢɪɴɢ ᴛʜᴇ ɪɴᴇᴠɪᴛᴀʙʟᴇ.”

Wonderful. He hadn’t even been a willing participant in the ritual, and now he was suffering its consequences. On the other hand, better to suffer these consequences rather than the one that Aelfric had. Just the reminder made his spine clench.

He would have no peace whatsoever until he gave her what she wanted.

Unless he could find a way to squirm out of it.

Yuri’s eyes flickered up to her own, so pale and bright they reminded him of concentrated magic. “...Fine. Can I at least think about it, or do you insist on doing this before I’ve even gotten dressed for the day?”

If his tone irritated her, Byleth gave no indication that it did. She gazed down at him, her eyelashes bobbing slightly before they raised back to their normal height. It jarred him to realize he hadn’t once seen her blink.

“Vᴇʀʏ ᴡᴇʟʟ.”

Her easy concession startled him. He expected more bitching from her lackeys, if not directly from Byleth herself. She seemed too above ‘bitching’ for that. She was the type to take more direct action, as he’d witnessed. A worm to the crane indeed.

Byleth peered into his eyes, lingering for several moments. Then she looked away from him, flicking her fingers towards the door until it swung open.

“I ᴛʀᴜsᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴡɪʟʟ ᴄᴏᴍᴇ ғɪɴᴅ ᴍᴇ ᴡʜᴇɴ ʏᴏᴜ'ʀᴇ ʀᴇᴀᴅʏ ᴛᴏ ɪssᴜᴇ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴅᴇᴍᴀɴᴅ. Uɴᴛɪʟ ᴛʜᴇɴ, ᴡᴇ ᴡɪʟʟ ᴍᴀᴋᴇ ᴏᴜʀsᴇʟᴠᴇs ᴀᴛ ʜᴏᴍᴇ.”

He’d been permitted about four seconds of relief when his brain sputtered to a halt. “What, here? In Abyss?”

They looked at him like he might be simple, even Byleth, which was the most insulting.

“Yᴇs.”

Yuri’s face dropped into a rigid scowl, and he cut his hand through the air, the other still clutching the sheets bundled in his lap. “You cannot possibly be serious. We’re in a glorified basement. As far as space goes, our cup doesn’t exactly _runneth over_ , you get me?” She really wanted her motley crew of monsters hanging around Abyss, getting in everyone’s way and probably traumatizing them while they were at it?

Ardat Lili’s head tilted so far back she would be in danger of drowning if the ceiling started to leak. He had to assume that was their closest equivalent of rolling their eyes. Byleth ignored her, however, too busy appraising Yuri’s face. When she smiled, dread rocketed up the entire length of his back.

“Mᴍ... Tʜᴀᴛ ɪs ᴜɴғᴏʀᴛᴜɴᴀᴛᴇ, ʙᴜᴛ ɪғ sᴘᴀᴄᴇ ɪs ᴛʜᴇ ɪssᴜᴇ, ᴛʜᴇɴ ɪᴛ ᴄᴀɴ'ᴛ ʙᴇ ʜᴇʟᴘᴇᴅ. Iɴ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴄᴀsᴇ, ᴡᴇ ᴡɪʟʟ ᴍᴏᴠᴇ ᴇʟsᴇᴡʜᴇʀᴇ. Pᴇʀʜᴀᴘs ᴛʜᴇ ɴᴏʙʟᴇ ᴄʜɪʟᴅʀᴇɴ ᴜᴘ ᴀʙᴏᴠᴇ ᴄᴀɴ ʙᴇ ᴍᴏʀᴇ ᴀᴄᴄᴏᴍᴍᴏᴅᴀᴛɪɴɢ ʜᴏsᴛs.”

He’d practiced his poker face in the mirror. He knew damn well his features didn’t move or even twitch, but he could feel the blood drain from his cheeks in the face of her threat. Was she bluffing? She’d made herself scarce before Rhea actually showed up last night, but she also couldn’t have known whether or not he’d actually take her up on her request to pass on her regards to the Archbishop. He could have been an idiot and taken her literally.

She was impossible to read, and it was infuriating. If she was bluffing, he didn’t have enough confidence to go so far as to call her out on it; because if she wasn’t, he wasn’t going to be the one responsible for Rhea deciding to purge Abyss when she discovered demons running rampant among her beloved students. “Fine,” he bit from between his teeth. “Stay here if you insist, just keep your damn monsters out of everyone’s way.”

Byleth declined to answer him. She strode out the door, her cape billowing majestically behind her and that strange tail of bone flickering beneath it. The other two followed her out, though not before Ardat Lili’s entire torso twisted around, and she left him with some alien gesture he didn’t understand except that it was meant to be deeply impertinent. Yuri responded in kind just in time for her to slam the door shut.

He dropped onto his back again and dragged his fingertips down his face. It wasn’t nothing. This all could be salvageable. It was breathing space and, more importantly, it was time. He had the opportunity to figure out a game plan. If he dug through the library, he might be able to find some sort of spell to break their supernatural contract, or even a method to desummon her.

...But before any of that came to pass, he was going to have to haul ass to prepare his Abyssians for the sudden influx of storybook monsters. The last thing he needed was for someone to freak out and attack one of them. She might tolerate insolence from the Wolves themselves, but Byleth had no particular reason to extend that courtesy to anyone else.

Throwing the sheets off himself, Yuri slid out of his bed and began jamming clothes on without even looking twice. He snatched only the barest essentials of his makeup off their stand and applied it on his way down the halls towards Burrow Street, shoving the bottles and cases into his pockets when he was done with them.

It was going to be an interesting few days to be sure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I sincerely apologize for taking so long to roll this chapter out. I've been sick for the last two weeks and have been pretty out of commission. Thank you guys for sticking with me! I hope you enjoy this chapter!


	4. In the Depths of the Fog

* * *

_Into your sanctum, you let them in_   
_Now all your loved ones and all your kin_

_Will suffer punishments beneath the wrath of God_

\---

Yuri had heard it often enough that he was aware someone could ‘rise’ to the expectations others had of them, but even as a young thing, he’d never been able to bring himself to buy that there were _that_ many optimists out in the world. How many people were really going around expecting more out of anyone than the level of capability they’d already demonstrated? You were much better off just not expecting anything at all -- disappointment was less of an inevitability that way. And yet, he’d never heard anyone express the opposite of such a sentiment, which didn’t seem right to him. If you could rise to expectations that seemed above your reach, then surely you could fall to ones below it.

Now, he was absolutely certain of that. If his expectations were at rock bottom, his people swan dove to meet them with a shovel between their teeth.

Abyss was a goddamned shitshow.

The past three days had been utter chaos the likes of which he’d never known. _Wᴇ ᴡɪʟʟ ᴍᴀᴋᴇ ᴏᴜʀsᴇʟᴠᴇs ᴀᴛ ʜᴏᴍᴇ_ was a threat that Byleth wasted no time making good on; every single demon that had swarmed the mausoleum was now free roaming Abyss like they owned the fucking place, and to say that Abyssians were handling it well would be an act of pure denial. Some of them had actually boarded up their shelters and had to be passed food through open slats.

While Yuri wasn’t exactly thrilled about their new guests, it still struck him as a bit of a disproportionate response. The demons were threatening, and by the Goddess, were they ever irritating, but none of them had gone so far as to attack anyone. They mostly just seemed amused by all of them, in the same way a python would be amused by mouse holes barricaded with toothpicks.

He had to imagine that if they had really wanted to, the monsters would already have maimed or attacked someone by now, so he could only assume that they didn’t. Otherwise, why wouldn’t they? There was nothing stopping them. He certainly couldn’t protect his Abyssians from an entire mob of demons. Not in his current position. Truth be told, Yuri couldn’t help but be surprised that Byleth hadn’t encouraged them to do exactly that in a calculated bid to force his hand and make him wish for the protection of his people. If their positions had been reversed, that would have been the first thing on his agenda. Perhaps he ought to thank his lucky stars that this demon queen was not as ruthless as he was.

Still, it mystified him. If what she had said before was true, she and the rest of her beasts were trapped there until all four of the Ashen Wolves sucked it up and made a request of her to unbind them from whatever hellish ‘contract’ they were under. But she didn’t seem particularly pressed to coax one out of him. He’d been sure that he’d have to invent increasingly outlandish ways to get away from her, but that had yet to be the case. In fact, for all three days, she had ignored him entirely.

It was as much a relief as it made him suspicious as all hell. Life had long since taught him that anything he received that wasn’t hard-won was not to be trusted. It was a lesson carved into the palms of his hands and the pads of his feet and the flesh of his heart. He worked for what he wanted, because if it wasn’t paid for with blood, sweat, tears, or any combination of the above, it was probably a scam. This was no different. He just couldn’t figure out what her angle was to either exploit it, or defend against it.

And he probably wasn’t going to figure it out any time soon when he had an entire underground labyrinth to babysit. No amount of his soothing words could allay their fears, especially not when they were such reasonable ones. Hell had essentially turned Abyss into its own personal lobby. They were smart to be afraid.

Yuri pressed a savage thumb between his eyes and squeezed them shut. A dull throb had blossomed in the back of his head on the very first day of this ridiculous mess, and it had only expanded its grip to his entire skull rather than just go away. Perfect. He had enough weighing on his mind as it was without having to nurse a headache on top of it.

As if sensing as much, the sensation of fingertips rolling against both his temples drop-kicked him right out of his mire of thoughts. His spine went rigid, and he thrust himself out of his chair and whirled around to see two milky white arms emerging from the wall, their fingers crooked and spread around the empty space where his head had been not two seconds ago. His lip curling, he slapped one of them with the back of his own hand and watched them retreat back into the wall.

The demons he could tolerate. It was those fucking _arms_ that were going to be the death of him. Irritated, he jerked his shoulder to rearrange the half-cape draped over it, and he turned away again just as an icy drop of water dripped from his hairline down to the bridge of his nose. He exhaled once, steadied himself, and tilted his head back. Byleth’s purplest henchman was poised crouched on the wall, one long, bony arm extended where thin rivulets of black water dripped from it. His thumb and forefinger were pinched around the crushed remnants of a dead spider that had been dangling not an inch from the crown of Yuri’s skull.

“...Crocell.”

“Sewer King,” he greeted in return, his head twisting at such an unnatural angle it made his own neck twinge. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

Yuri’s eyes darted away from his blank face over to his hand. “Don’t you have anything better to do than offer unrequested pest control?”

Rather against his will, he watched Crocell draw his arm back and examine -- he assumed -- the tip of his finger before he slid it into his mouth and sucked the spider’s remains off it. A sour grimace tugged at his face, and he took yet another step back from the demon. “You jest,” Crocell started, drawing his hand back and crawling down the wall with all four of his spindly legs. “But no, I don’t. I thought you might prefer this, at any rate. You seemed like you were growing fatigued of all the screams.”

The reminder was designed to aggravate him, so he didn’t let it. Crocell made a fair point. Three days was more than enough for Yuri to adapt to the majority of situations, but that was not so for everyone. One of Byleth’s monsters flickered in and out of visibility, and it was not uncommon to hear someone run screaming from a hallway they’d assumed was empty. That one was the usual suspect any time terrified screeches bounced between the stone hallways, but it was far and away from the only culprit. For his part, Crocell liked to appear from any amount of water that was big enough to fit him, which was usually a bathtub.

“...Right. I’ll be sure and write a thank you note.”

Yuri spun away from him and reached up to rub the black water off his skin. Contrary to its appearance, it always had a vaguely earthy scent, but not in a pleasant way. It was more like what he’d always assumed grave dirt would smell like. He smeared his palm across his thigh and left Crocell to the abandoned classroom. There were better uses of his time than trading barbs with an eyeless goblin that had too many limbs.

He stepped out of the classroom and cut right. Rather than take the most straight-forward route, Yuri slid into a narrow side hall to go the long way around, and the sounds of life filtering out from Burrow Street soon fell away from his ears. Now, only the echo of his footsteps reached him, and the occasional flicker of burning lantern wicks.

It was a little too similar to his nightmare for his liking. The hallway seemed longer than usual. A little darker, a little more...isolated. Both walls felt decidedly closer to his ribs than they normally did.

But there was no sign of life until he spotted the disjointed motions of another pair of those horrendous arms extending from the wall, so low to the ground he was immediately suspicious that they were there to do nothing more than try and trip passersby. Yuri slowed, squinting at them, but it soon became apparent they were caught up in something else. They were curled around something he couldn’t make out. Not until he got closer.

Their long, grotesque fingers were crooked and shifting, and he was startled to see a cat crouched between them, purring so loud he could hear it even from this distance. What in the world. They were....petting it? One hand was scratching at the underside of the cat’s chin while the other stroked the smooth fur of its back. Beside it was a half-eaten piece of fish.

At least they had a modicum of respect for the more furry residents of Abyss. Yuri scoffed to himself and frowned, falling still just outside the safest distance he could get. Great. The cats had learned to avoid him by now, but this one was too caught up in its doting attention to have scampered away. He sighed and grabbed his cape with the opposite hand, drawing it over his mouth and nose and side-stepping it so far his shoulder almost scraped the wall. Neither the cat nor the arms paid him any mind at all.

The instant he was far enough away, he let his cape slide away from his face and stepped out onto the edge of the tunnel marking the end of Burrow Street. Taking a breath, he squeezed himself into the tiny crevice behind the market and carefully shimmied along the stretch of it until he popped out on the other side.

Yuri fully intended to just turn the corner and go straight up the stairs, but his attention was rather arrested by the women crammed into the doorway of the library. His face screwed up in question, and he cocked his head as he saw the strange mage who always seemed to be hanging around any time he passed by. She looked mesmerized by whatever it was she was staring at. He was tempted to ask what the hell they were doing, but he decided instead to join the small crowd and lift himself up onto his tiptoes to peer over their heads.

Ah. No wonder.

It was Byleth. The library had emptied itself out, leaving her to have run of the place, and she clearly had no compunctions whatsoever about making herself comfortable. She was stretched out across a nest of white arms that had folded themselves into the shape of a horrific-looking chaise, her long legs folded and two of the disembodied arms bent and braiding her pale hair.

There was a book floating in between her own hands, but she had either just finished it, or she’d lost interest, as she unfurled her fingers and watched it float up higher and slot itself back into its place on the shelf. In its stead, her magic drew out a different tome, and she brought it drifting gently down before her face. The book opened itself up, and as it did, Byleth frowned.

Yuri snorted to himself and covered his mouth with one hand, his eyes still locked on the demon. He recognized that book. _Words of Love_ , one of the few works that’d had the distinct honor of being gutted entirely before it fell into their more shameless hands. He’d always been mad about it; his curiosity was a ravenous beast, and it despised knowing when things were being kept from it, no matter how trivial they might be. Byleth seemed to be of a similar persuasion, if her displeasure was any indication.

The frown on her face soon smoothed itself away, however, and she angled her spread fingers away from the book and lifted it higher. Something about her magic always made itself known to him even before it manifested in any kind of visible way. He could feel the air grow thicker with it. Could feel it spark inside his nose and against the tips of its fingers. A strange pattern of white runes burst to life around the book where it hovered there, split down the spine and cracked open wide while its lone remaining page rustled pitifully.

And then suddenly it wasn’t. Each and every one of its pages seemed to reappear, fanning back inside it and sealing themselves along the binding. Even the cover changed right before its eyes, the dull leather steadily regaining its original color. When the complicated circle of runes dissolved in the air, the tome between her hands looked brand new, as though she’d transported it back through time.

A gasp sounded by his ear, and he turned to see the mage woman draped against the wall with an utterly besotted look on her face. “By the goddess, she’s amazing.”

Yuri wrinkled his nose but elected not to respond. He cast one last look over to Byleth to see her glancing back at him, then pivoted on the heel of his boot and made his way to the entrance. So much for killing time. Now he was actively in danger of being late. Damn it.

He hissed a curse under his breath and took three steps at a time, practically leaping up onto the landing. There was one last expanse to cross before reaching the gap in the walls of the monastery; the lip of the opening was only an arm’s length away when it occurred to him that he was being followed. Yuri stopped, his hand already moving for the wall to brace himself, and he looked over his shoulder to see Byleth standing behind him. To his total lack of surprise, she was flanked by her two most annoying minions, and Lili was smiling at him in a way that made his hackles rise. “Hello, little mud troll.”

He swung around to face them and extended his arms with the same faux cheerfulness she’d used to address him. “Evening, spider bitch. What can I do for you?”

Lili’s narrow chest puffed up in preparation to respond to him, but before she could, Byleth’s hand shot up and covered the entirety of her face.

“Tʜᴇʀᴇ ɪs ɴᴏ ɴᴇᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ sᴛᴏᴘ ᴏɴ ᴍʏ ᴀᴄᴄᴏᴜɴᴛ. Kᴇᴇᴘ ᴡᴀʟᴋɪɴɢ.”

Yuri blinked at her, opened his mouth, then closed it again. Unbelievable. She had a lot of fucking nerve ordering him around like that. “Well, I would love to, but as it happens, I’m off to a meeting. Invite only, I’m afraid.”

Her face stayed as motionless as a statue, making it crystal clear that she didn’t understand how that was relevant to her in any way. Right. Of course it wasn’t. He blew out a brusque, impatient little breath and pressed a hand to his hip. “Allow me to clarify. That was a polite way of telling you not to follow me. We on the same page now?”

Only Byleth’s lip moved, curling slightly. The demons at her sides lent her their voices instead, layered with many others from bodies he couldn’t see. “Is ᴛʜᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜʀ ғᴏʀᴍᴀʟ ʀᴇᴏ̨ᴜᴇsᴛ?” An unattractive splutter came dangerously close to leaving him before he swallowed it back down.

“Are you serious? No. Absolutely not. I was trying to appeal to your better nature, but it seems as though you don’t have one.” This fucking... _woman_. Demon. Creature. Whatever the hell she was, it was a goddamned chore to deal with her. She’d already made him late, and now she was going to try and crash the party too? “Alright, fine. Will you _please_ stay here? I have something important to attend to. Right now.”

“Nᴏ.”

Her bluntness managed to be both refreshing, in a hilarious way, and unforgivably infuriating, in a not hilarious way. Yuri stood there for several seconds and cursed his inability to respond to her. She was awfully good at rendering him speechless. He wasn’t used to that.

Eventually, he was able to pull himself together by force, and he clenched a fist and gestured sharply with his other hand. “You can _not_ come with me. I’ve-”

Byleth’s pale eyes narrowed, and she closed the distance between them to leer down the slope of her nose. “Lɪᴛᴛʟᴇ ᴍᴏᴜsᴇ ᴘʀɪɴᴄᴇ, ʏᴏᴜ ʟᴀʙᴏʀ ᴜɴᴅᴇʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇʟᴜsɪᴏɴ ᴛʜᴀᴛ I ʀᴇᴏ̨ᴜɪʀᴇ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴘᴇʀᴍɪssɪᴏɴ.”

He stiffened beneath her threatening gaze, but he refused to be cowed. “Can you knock it off with the rodent shit? It’s getting old. If you absolutely insist on using animals for demeaning nicknames, I prefer to think of myself as a sparrow.”

He hadn’t expected them to, but his words gave her pause. Byleth stood looming over him, her body swallowing the shadow cast by the moon glowing at his back. Then both her arms snaked around him, and his legs locked into place as her fingers curled into claws at the very base of his spine. He could feel the cold tips of her gauntlets where they pierced through the material of his shirt. The rounded edges pressed flush to his bare skin, and he could do little more than watch her face while they climbed up higher and higher, the pop of ripping thread echoing in the hallway. Her fingers coursed all the way up his back and followed the curves of his shoulder blades before she pulled them away. He was shocked not to feel rivulets of blood gushing down his back.

She brought her hands back in front of his face where long, coiled strips of black hung limply from between her fingers. “A sᴘᴀʀʀᴏᴡ ᴡɪᴛʜᴏᴜᴛ ᴡɪɴɢs ɪs ɴᴀᴜɢʜᴛ ʙᴜᴛ ᴀ ғᴇᴀᴛʜᴇʀᴇᴅ ᴍᴏᴜsᴇ.” With a sneer, she shifted her arms, and the fabric twisted itself into feathers that she tossed away from her like trash. “I ᴀᴍ ᴡᴇʟʟ ᴀᴡᴀʀᴇ ᴏғ ʏᴏᴜʀ ɪɴᴛᴇɴᴛɪᴏɴs ᴛᴏ ᴍᴇᴇᴛ ᴡɪᴛʜ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴍᴇʀᴄᴇɴᴀʀɪᴇs, ʙᴜᴛ ᴛʜᴇʏ ᴀʀᴇ ᴜɴɴᴇᴄᴇssᴀʀʏ. I ᴀʟᴏɴᴇ ᴡɪʟʟ sᴜғғɪᴄᴇ.”

Yuri swallowed. Cold air assaulted the freshly-exposed swathes of his uninjured skin, carried through the slim hole separating Abyss from the outside world. “...Fine.” Fuck it. All his carefully laid plans were shot to shit anyway. May as well go all the way. He slid back a step and glared at her, though, jerking his hand again. “Could you at least make yourself slightly less conspicuous? They’re going to gut us at the gates if you try to waltz in looking like that.”

Byleth merely nodded and reached forward, flattening a hand to his sternum and shoving him backwards through the gap. He very nearly stumbled on the lip, but he managed to step up over it and out onto the grass without falling on his ass. He was tempted to snap at her, but before he could, she was already following him out. When she stood in front of him again, he was shocked to see that, for the first time, he was almost eye-level with her.

She stood shorter than him, and her armor had changed into something remarkably less inhuman. Her horns had vanished too, leaving only the lilies in her pale green hair. It was disarming how much more normal she seemed. Which just went to show how fucked up his standards had become, because she still didn’t look like a normal human exactly.

But it was an improvement. Yuri rubbed at the back of his neck and sighed, stepping away from her to lead the way to where the Scorpions lay in wait for them. If nothing else, it was sure to be an interesting experience.

She’d better get his fucking gold back.

His people were going to be so confused when he didn’t show up. Nothing for it, he supposed. His eyes cut over to see Byleth gliding beside him, silent as a wraith, both her henchmen lingering behind. For once, her presence was almost companionable. It helped that she was no longer so much taller than him that she could use his head as a tit shelf if she felt like it.

He led the way out of the monastery, taking care to avoid all the obnoxious little do-gooders of the academy, but as soon as they were safely off the grounds and on their way to the edge of town, he folded his arms behind his head and glanced over to the demon at his side.

“Aren’t you a regular chatterbox? It’s been a whole five minutes since one of your goons insulted me. I’m starting to feel antsy.”

Byleth stared back at him, but of course, she remained silent. He was, admittedly, goading her for no other reason than to be a dick, but he could admit to feeling more fascinated than he did satisfied. Could she not speak at all without her demons? Was it a proximity issue? Was her true voice so powerful it would kill him if she unleashed it on him? Did she even have a true voice? Or was she just ignoring him? Hm.

“I like you better like this, I think. You’re much nicer to me.”

He made several more comments to see if she would respond, but Byleth never did. She looked straight ahead and continued to walk as if he wasn’t there at all. He may as well have been talking to a wall. Yuri knew damn well how stupid it was to antagonize her -- just because she looked more human didn’t mean that she was, and he still had ten long, gaping holes in his shirt from the last time she hadn’t liked what he’d had to say. Eugh, he was going to have to get that patched or something.

The reminder was enough to shut him up for the remainder of the journey. Eventually, they arrived at the stronghold the Scorpions had squirreled away. He slowed to a near stop lest he risk being seen, but stealth did not appear to be the tactic of the evening. Byleth strode ahead of him and walked straight up to the two guards standing watch, leaving a bewildered Yuri to trot after her.

“Hey, hey, hey, who the fuck are you? You can’t just barge in-”

Both of them drew their weapons at the same time, but one of them froze when he appeared to recognize him. The man blinked several times, staring at him slack jawed until he was able to recover. Yuri sympathized. He’d probably be doing the same if some idiot tried such a bold tactic on him. “Y- You’re the Savage Mockingbird. What the hell are you doing here?”

The other one looked over to him too, and a faint smirk tugged at Yuri’s glossy mouth. Goddess help him, even their henchmen were generic. Even though he was looking right at them, he could barely commit their bland faces to memory. They looked exactly like how a bard would describe some unimportant background characters who were only in the story to add flavor. “My friend and I are here to visit with your boss. That cool with you?”

A beat, and both of the guards looked at each other, like they thought maybe the other one was in on the joke, and the punchline would be revealed any second now. “You’re...not being serious, right?”

“‘Fraid so.” He offered them a pleasant smile and lifted both his open hands. “Trust me, I’m just as surprised as you are. At any rate, surely you can’t be too concerned, considering there are only two of us. It’ll just be a quick chat. Cross my heart.”

The man to his left scratched his head, his face screwed up in thought. “Uh...right. Who’s your friend here?”

Byleth had elected not to say a word, thus continuing the trend of the evening. She did little more than gaze back at the man who was so preoccupied with her, her face as impassive as usual. Yuri eyed the woman and then shook his head. “That’s Byleth. She doesn’t talk much.”

“Oh.”

He had to give Byleth credit for one thing. Doing something so brazenly inadvisable was working to their advantage. For now. These two idiots were so perplexed they had no idea how to react to them at all. It took them some loud whispering to come to an agreement, but they did finally split and wave their arms to the open mouth of the entrance. Together, he and Byleth stepped toward it, but she fell behind when one of them spoke up again.

“I guess we can let you in, just ‘cause you seem like such a nice lady. You’ve got some real nice titties.”

Classy. Yuri rolled his eyes and pressed on. He slid his hand to the hilt of his sword and squeezed at the pummel, just waiting for one of them to try and get in a good stab while his back was turned. They did not. Rather, Byleth rejoined him, and an unholy scream was cut off by the shifting of earth that slammed across the open entrance.

He whipped around with a start, both his eyes wide, but there was nothing to see beyond a solid wall of dirt. Standing at his side was Byleth with a tiny little crescent of a smile on her face. Whatever she’d done to him, she obviously was not in a position to describe it without her awful choir. Yuri smothered his burning desire to ask. In this instance, it seemed better not to know.

Not that he was afforded much of a chance to wonder. That scream must have carried further than he’d realized; there was already a second pair of lummoxes rushing down the hallway, swords at the ready. Byleth leveled them with her eerie, unmoved stare and withdrew the sword strapped at her hip. Intrigue rippled through his chest. He had yet to see her actually use a weapon. So far, she’d dispatched anyone she cared to from a distance, and he could admit he was insanely curious to see what she’d be like in the heat of proper combat.

So of course, that was exactly what Byleth didn’t do. Her fingers loosened around the hilt, and she flipped it over her wrist and thrust it towards the wall beside her. Another of her ghastly white arms burst forth and accepted the blade from her. The way it glided so unnaturally, like the wall wasn’t even there, was as interesting to look at as it was off-putting. Yuri followed the thing as it sped towards one of the men, dipping low and bringing the sword up into a swinging arc that sliced clean through his right leg.

The second man met such a similar fate to Yuri’s dream self that his cheek stung just at the reminder. A pair of hands erupted from the ground and fastened around his ankles, sending him crashing face-down with a crunch of his nose and a scream that was swallowed when he was dragged backwards into the earth.

Byleth simply kept walking, stepping over the prone form of the man still clutching the bleeding stump of his leg and blubbering incoherent nonsense. Yuri followed, resigned to stay firmly within the boundaries of her ever-expanding shadow. The mage woman was right. Byleth truly was amazing. It didn’t seem like the things she could do should be attributed to something as mundane as magic. It felt more...absolute. More immutable. It felt like the world itself was willing to reconstruct itself to accommodate her whims, utterly irrespective of both physics and gravity.

He watched a sinkhole open up to devour another group of Scorpions in one fell swoop, then smooth itself back over as soon as Byleth’s foot was hovering above it. Even the building reshaped itself just like the earth did. Hallways shifted and turned and closed themselves to block any new groups threatening to move in on them. It struck him, then, that it made sense why Byleth seemed to know exactly where they needed to go. It wasn’t that she had intuited some sort of mental map of the layout. It was that the hideout was literally changing itself to be convenient to her. In fact, in less than a full minute, the hall around them spread open and deposited them into an open courtyard where the bulk of the remaining Scorpions were packed around the form of the man who could only be the leader.

Briefly, he felt Byleth’s fingers alight against his back before she shoved him, sending him forward a pretty respectable distance for how small she now was. He whipped his head around to glare at her, but he wasn’t stupid enough to let his attention stray too far from the staggering number of enemies facing them down. He was kind of surprised there were still so many left.

No one said anything, but Yuri was perfectly happy to take the initiative. “Hi there,” he called, glancing upward to note where the moon was hanging in the sky. They’d actually made pretty decent time here. “I think you know why I’m here. If you’d be so kind as to return my belongings, with sufficient interest, my friend and I will be on our way, and you gentlemen can enjoy the rest of your evening.”

The big boss -- Yuri couldn’t remember his name, something kind of short and mostly made up of guttural, unattractive syllables, like his parents had _wanted_ him to grow up to become some shitty bandit leader -- made an irritated noise at him and broke through the ranks of the cannon fodder surrounding him. “Arrogant little shit. You think you can come in here and threaten us like that?”

Again, Yuri found himself rolling his eyes and curling a hand around his elbow, gesturing a little impatiently with his fingers. “Considering how the rest of this has gone down, I _know_ I can. The numbers being in your favor hasn’t exactly panned out for you thus far, don’t you think?”

Behind him, Byleth said and did nothing. She made no indication that she intended to advance, or to do anything, really. For a split second, a spark of fear lit up the inside of his stomach. What if she decided she was bored of intervening? That bandit was right, he was being arrogant. They’d only made it unscathed this far because of Byleth.

But it would be absurd for her to escort him all this way just to let him die to a horde of morons at the very end. He shook the foolish thought from his head and looked away from her, and as he did so, his eyebrows lifted. The courtyard was growing steadily more hazy with fog that thickened with each passing second. It had been clear when they first emerged. Was it coming from Byleth?

Clearly, he wasn’t the only one who noticed. The restless sound of shifting weight and moving weapons sounded, like the bandits were also nervous about the quickly decreasing visibility.

“This- is this your doing?! I’m warning you-”

“Wᴏᴜʟᴅ ʏᴏᴜ ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴛᴏ ʙᴇᴀʀ ᴡɪᴛɴᴇss ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴇᴠᴇɴᴛ ᴏғ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ?”

Yuri’s heart jolted. He spun to the side to see Byleth, still perfectly still, her eyes burning even through the fog. Above her, nestled within the dead branches of the surrounding trees, were hundreds upon hundreds of black mockingbirds, shadows rolling off their tiny bodies, and all of their eyes the same glowing green as Byleth’s.

She slid forward a pace, and the courtyard rocked so hard that more than one of the Scorpions was thrown to their knees. The smaller the distance between them, the taller she grew, black horns spiraling from the crown of her skull as all four of her limbs stretched further and further. Even through the choking fog, Yuri could make out the shapes of the brigands reaching for their weapons only to grasp at empty sheathes.

Byleth ignored them and pressed on, their bodies sliding away from her like ocean water parting away from the hull of an impossible ship. The leader tried to retreat from her, but it was much too late. Both her hands lifted and curled around the sides of his face.

The rest of them couldn’t even lunge for her, or do anything to protect their leader. A sharp, shrieking gust of wind spiraled from the center out, carrying the fog with it. As Yuri let his arm fall away from his eyes, his insides worked themselves into a cold knot.

Surrounding Byleth and her captive was a horde of enormous, bleached-white scorpions that were not scorpions.

They were _arms_.

They’d folded themselves into the shapes of long, thick thoraxes, and eight more arms extended from their bodies to form each leg. Yet more of them curled upward to mimic the tail, one arm grasping at the base of another, and the hand at the very tip gripped a gleaming dagger in its spindly fingers. Ah. That’s where their weapons had gone. They’d used the cover of the fog to pilfer them and turn them into makeshift pincers and scorpion stingers.

Byleth was so goddamned twisted in the most theatrical way he was almost jealous.

The grotesque pseudo-scorpions formed a ring around her, forcing the brigands back with their own weapons. He couldn’t decide if terrorizing them with their own namesake was fucking ingenious, or if it just breathtakingly sadistic. Or both. Whatever it was, it was effective. Byleth’s fingers grasped at the man’s face, and a ring of white magic opened up at her feet.

The overwhelming force of it threatened to choke him, magic burning at his fingers and his face and the inside of his throat, and he wasn’t even the one being touched. Yuri squinted through the blazing magic to try and see what it was she was doing to him, but his efforts were in vain. For all that he could make out, she was merely holding him. Until the magic fell away from them.

The circle at her feet shattered, and the man in her arms crumpled, both his thick arms fastened around her waist.

He was...crying.

Thick, bodyshaking sobs filled the silence in the courtyard. He pressed his face to Byleth’s stomach and wailed with the all-consuming despair of a child who had watched his family die in front of him. Above him, Byleth tilted her head, her arms falling around him, one of her hands grasping the top of his head like she was some sort of black angel of suffering.

The man spoke into her stomach, too muffled for Yuri to understand him. But then he said it again, and again, tilting his head back to look up at her with eyes drowned in tears. “Please,” he begged her. “Please, have mercy.”

Again, Byleth’s hand patted the top of his head, then slid down to cup his cheek. “I ᴄᴀɴɴᴏᴛ ᴀʟᴛᴇʀ ᴛʜᴇ ᴄᴏᴜʀsᴇ ᴏғ ʏᴏᴜʀ ғᴀᴛᴇ. Oɴʟʏ ʏᴏᴜ ᴄᴀɴ ᴅᴏ ᴛʜᴀᴛ.”

His eyes opened wide. Yet more tears dripped down his chin and onto the ground. “I...can?”

“Oғ ᴄᴏᴜʀsᴇ. Tʜᴇʀᴇ ɪs _ᴀʟᴡᴀʏs_ ᴀɴᴏᴛʜᴇʀ ᴘᴀᴛʜ ᴛᴏ ᴡᴀʟᴋ.”

He hit the ground with both knees, his thick, trembling hands tight around Byleth’s own, seemingly ignorant of the gauntlets cutting into his flesh. “I will. I swear. I swear!”

A thin smile drew itself across her mouth. Slowly, she lowered to one of her own knees, and she bent down to whisper something to him Yuri couldn’t hear. It pissed him off. He was desperate to know, especially so when the man whipped around to face him.

He had never seen anyone look more petrified in his entire life. He looked fucking haunted. He looked like the very embodiment of Death was standing right at Yuri’s shoulder. Baffled, he chanced a short glance over his shoulder just to confirm that there was no pale rider standing behind him, but there was nothing save more dead trees and the mangled hideout.

When he turned back around, the man was scrambling to his feet, little stuttering sobs still wracking his chest. He took one small step, then crumpled back onto the ground, curled up in a tight bow at Yuri’s boots. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. You can have it-- all of it. I’m so sorry.”

Finally, he looked up again, palpable hesitation rolling off him in waves. He met Yuri’s eyes like he thought he could kill with a stare.

He wasn’t afraid of Byleth. He was afraid of _Yuri_.

“...Okay,” he responded stupidly.

The bandit crawled away from him and ran straight through the tunnel of hallway that was his ruined lair. It took a few seconds for the situation to catch up to them, but as it finally did, the rest of the bandits were tripping over each other to follow their disgraced leader to safety. Anything to get away from them -- or him.

He watched all of them flee, the not-scorpions nipping at their heels with little jabs of their pincers and tails. Yuri swallowed and turned to face her. “What the hell did you say to him?”

The smile Byleth regarded him with convinced him he was in for another plethora of interesting nightmares tonight. Sweeping up beside him, Byleth leaned into him, uncomfortably close to his ear.

“Dᴇᴀᴛʜ ғʟɪᴇs ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ sʜᴀᴅᴏᴡs ᴏғ ᴍᴏᴄᴋɪɴɢʙɪʀᴅs.” Straightening once again, she gestured with a quirk of her head. “Yᴏᴜʀ ɢᴏʟᴅ ɪs ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴡᴀʏ.”

He allowed her to lead him to where it was stashed, but his mind was much too awhirl with the night’s events for him to pay any attention to where he was going. He was too distracted to even be excited about walking out of here with a bigger excess of gold than he’d anticipated.

“Byleth?”

He could see the glow of her iris shift to the corner of her eye.

“Why did you want to come here tonight?”

If she thought his question was stupid, her face didn’t move to betray as much, or move at all, in fact. She only swiveled her neck to stare at him a little more head-on. “Hᴀᴅ I ɴᴏᴛ, ʏᴏᴜ ᴡᴏᴜʟᴅ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ʙᴇᴇɴ ᴋɪʟʟᴇᴅ.”

She said it like she was so damn _certain_ of it. Like his death here was already written in some mystical tapestry of fate. It’s what he’d expected to hear, but even so, her verbalizing his undone failure stung like hell. He’d been getting by in life without her just fine, thanks very much.

“How can you say that like it was such a done deal? You just told that Scorpion that his fate was alterable, but mine wasn’t?”

The way Byleth smirked at him made his blood boil all the hotter. He opened his mouth to say as much, but she beat him to the punch. “Aɢᴀɪɴ, ʏᴏᴜ ᴍɪsᴜɴᴅᴇʀsᴛᴀɴᴅ, ᴍʏ ғʟɪɢʜᴛʟᴇss ʟɪᴛᴛʟᴇ sᴘᴀʀʀᴏᴡ. Hɪs ғᴀᴛᴇ ɪs ᴀʟᴛᴇʀᴀʙʟᴇ. Yᴏᴜʀ ғᴀᴛᴇ ɪs _ᴍɪɴᴇ_.”

She angled her body and pushed forward, forcing his back into the wall and bringing her hand up to curl around the column of his throat. It somehow felt more delicate within the hold of her grip, like he really was a bird made up of fragile, hollow bones she could crush with laughable ease.

The smirk fell away from her face, leaving it cold and hard and unfeeling as a stone, and she began to squeeze.

“Kɴᴏᴡ ᴛʜɪs. Dᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴀɴᴅ I ᴀʀᴇ ᴠᴇʀʏ, ᴠᴇʀʏ ᴏʟᴅ ғʀɪᴇɴᴅs. Bᴜᴛ ʜᴇ ᴡɪʟʟ ɴᴏᴛ sᴀᴠᴇ ʏᴏᴜ ғʀᴏᴍ ᴍᴇ.”

She let go of him and strode away, dismissing him with a flick of her hair.

He should have let them keep the gold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I sincerely apologize for the huge delay in getting this chapter out. My personal life has been incredibly chaotic lately, but it's finally starting to settle down. Thank you so much for your patience, I appreciate you bearing with me!
> 
> ♥ Radi


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